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Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Reactions to the Budget Proposal

The future of NASA’s planetary science for
the next decade will be decided here on Earth in the offices of the President’s
administrators and Congress. It takes
five years to conceive, develop, and launch relatively simple missions such as
those flown by the Discovery program.
Technically complex missions such as Mars rovers or Europa orbiters
require longer periods to mature the concepts and bring all the required
technologies to flight readiness. NASA’s
funding over the next two or three years will determine whether it will be
ready to launch complex missions seven to ten years from now.

The President's proposed FY14 budget would end planning for a NASA mission to Europa.

A week and a half ago, the President releasedhis proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2014 and budget projections for the
following five years. That proposal
continues support for NASA’s smaller planetary missions in the Discovery
($450-500M) and New Frontiers ($750M-1B) programs. Funding for a 2020 Mars rover based on the
Curiosity rover’s design is foreseen in future budgets. The technology program to mature technologies
to enable future missions was cut to provide funding to develop new supplies of
plutonium-238 to enable missions that cannot depend on solar power. (I missed
this implication in my initial budget analysis because the budget documents
provided no detail on how technology funding would be spent.) The budget proposes no funding for maturing
the design of a future Europa orbiter even though Congress had just weeks
earlier inserted funding for this in the FY13 budget signed by the President.

The budget did proposed detailed analysis of
and technology development for a major new manned spaceflight initiative to
bring a small (~7 m diameter) asteroid into lunar orbit where it could be
examined by NASA astronauts.

Entangled in discussions of the FY14 proposed
budget are plans of how to cut the just enacted FY13 budget by approximately 5%
to meet the terms of the sequester.
Press reports have suggested that NASA plans to cut much of the increase
approved by Congress for the planetary program in the FY13 budget to reduce
cuts to other programs.

The President’s budget proposals are just
that – proposals subject to change as Congress, the scientific community, and
private citizens review the impacts and lobby for changes. Since the budget proposal was released, the
dance of lobbying and staking out positions has begun. In this post, I’ve rounded up a summary of
reactions as reported on various websites.
If you are an American citizen, I urge you to make your opinions known
to your representatives in Congress.
(See the end of the post for information on how to easily do this.)

Division
for Planetary Sciences Analysis

The American Astronomical Society’s Division
for Planetary Sciences is one of the major associations for professional
planetary researchers. They released their analysis of the budget last week: [The proposed budget] “continues
the same cuts to NASA’s planetary science program that were proposed in last
year’s FY13 Budget Request. The FY14 request is almost $300M less than the FY12
approved operating plan… There is some good news: the Research and Analysis (R&A)
program appears to receive an $8M increase in FY14 compared to FY12, and remain
flat for the out-years. Funding would be provided to the Discovery Program
which may enable advancement of the next AO to FY14… Many other elements of the
NASA planetary program, however, suffer. The Europa Clipper pre-project study
funded by Congress in FY13 has no future according to the FY14 Budget Request… Cassini
might be shut down in FY15… One concern is that while the total funding
requested for the Mars 2020 rover mission seems adequate, the funding profile
is heavily “back-loaded” meaning the bulk of the funds would be provided in the
last two years. Lessons learned from past missions show back-funded missions to
be at high risk of cost over-run.”

Congressional
Reaction

Space News reports that
Senator Mikulski, chairwoman of the Senate’s Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce,
Justice, Science, and Related Agencies that funds NASA among other agencies, is
“concerned” about the level of cuts proposed for the planetary program in the
FY14 budget compared to the FY13 approved budget.

A group of two Senators and two Representativeswrote NASA reminding its administrator that Congress approved a larger FY13
budget and requesting that NASA apply the sequester evenly across its
programs. This letter apparently was in
response to the reports that NASA planned to eliminate much or all of the
increase in the approved FY13 planetary budget to preserve funding for other
programs from the sequester.

Editorial
Note: As is usual in NASA related Congressional positions, all the senators and
representatives taking stances represent districts or states with substantial
NASA activity. While protecting local jobs
is a primary survival instinct for any politician, the support for a broader
planetary program among these members of Congress seems genuine. They took care to ensure that a substantial
portion of the cuts proposed by the administration were reversed in the final
FY13 bill in ways that supported the scientific community’s recommendations in
the Decadal Survey. The proposed FY14
budget would reverse much of the increase in the FY13 budget.

The Planetary Society

The Planetary Society advocates for a vigorous robotic and human programs to explore the solar system. After leading (and largely winning) a spirited fight to have many of the cuts proposed in the original FY13 budget reversed, they are back again this year fighting the cuts in the FY14 budget. You can read their plans here.

Editorial: U.S. Planetary Science: Fading
to Black

Two former senior managers in NASA’s
science program, Robert Braun and Noel Hinners, wrote an editorial forSpace News (which
does not require a subscription to read). “By any objective measure, planetary
science is one of America’s crown jewels… Despite the success that has built up
over decades, today we are on a path that relinquishes U.S. planetary science
leadership. Starting in 2017, with the end of the Juno mission at Jupiter and
the Cassini mission at Saturn, NASA will only have spacecraft at or on their
way to one planet: Mars… Because it takes at least five years to conceive,
design and implement a planetary science mission, this cliff is not only upon
us, it is getting larger with each passing day. The next suite of planetary
science missions should already be in development… Unfortunately, President
Barack Obama’s 2014 budget request for NASA continues the draconian path for
planetary science laid out in the administration’s 2013 request… Does the U.S.
really want to cede leadership of the scientific exploration of the rest of the
solar system to other nations?”

Editorial Note: The
opinion piece somewhat overstates the Mars focus. The
administration’s proposed budget continues support for the Discovery and New
Frontiers programs. While Discovery selections can target Mars (and
the InSight Mars geophysical station in development does), it is likely that at
least some future selected missions will target other destinations. None
of the approved targets for New Frontiers missions, including the OSIRIS-REx
asteroid sample return mission in development, include Mars.

However, Braun and Hinners are correct in their assessment of
large missions (>$1B), where only Mars missions are envisioned.And by the end of the decade, 60% of NASA’s
planetary mission budget would focus on Mars, with the rest split between the
more limited Discovery and New Frontiers missions.This is not the balanced program of
destinations envisioned in the Decadal Survey.

Reaction
to the Asteroid Retrieval

In general, the most positive responses to NASA’s proposal to bring
an asteroid to lunar orbit came from supporters of future asteroid mining. Among other observers, the reactions ranged
from wait and see the results of the analysis to be done this year to
skepticism. (If this proposal interests
you, both the Space Review and Space Policy Online articles go into some depth
in their analysis.)

The Space Review quotes Steve Squyres, (Principal Investigator
for the Mars Opportunity mission, past chair for the planetary Decadal Survey,
and current chair of NASA’s Advisory Committee) as saying, “I can’t assess it,” he
said. “I don’t know if this can be done or not. I don’t know what it’s going to
cost. It’s a very new idea, it’s very immature, it needs a really hard,
carefully considered look, and then we’ll see.”

Space Policy Online
reports that, “Skeptics point out that, apart from
technical challenges, there is no explanation of where the money will come from
to execute the mission in future years... NASA said it thinks it
might be able to do it for less [than the current ~$2.5B estimate] because some
of the work is already underway, but the basis for that optimism is obscure
since the agency will not even complete a mission concept study until the
end of this summer… there is confusion over the relationship of this
mission to protecting Earth from asteroids as well as why about humans are
needed to bring back a sample of an asteroid when NASA already is building a
robotic probe (OSIRIS-REx) to do that (not to mention that Japan already has
done so and is planning a second mission), and the budget is murky in
the short term and lacks credibility for the long term.”

Editorial Thought: I find the asteroid retrieval proposal intriguing. I think too little is known about the technical issues and true cost to build a strategy around it just yet. I look forward to learning those details as they become available in the next year. For the current year, NASA is increasing funding for technologies essential to a possible retrieval but that would also be useful for other missions.

----------------------

The DSP news release provided practical advice
on how you can share your opinions on NASA’s planetary budget with Congress,
which will write the final FY14 budget:

“We urge every member of
the Division to write letters to your two senators and your representative
expressing: (1) your thanks for the past support of Congress; (2) your concern
about the sequester and the implications of the President’s FY14 Budget Request
for the FY13 budget and all later years; and (3) your plea for continued
support from Congress.

“Please write to your
senators and representative today. A hand-written letter, faxed to your
representative, is best. You can also use the website provided by The Planetary
Society to send your own letter or their letter, which you can edit (http://www.planetary.org/get-involved/be-a-space-advocate/take-action/);
you do not need to be a member of The Planetary Society to use their website.

“To influence the FY13
NASA operating plan and the FY14 budget, the time to act is now. Please support
planetary science and do not delay. A sample letter is given below, and will be
posted on our website.”

1 comment:

Getting to meet the Prez is almost as good as winning The Stanley Cup.I've reaffirmed my faith in NASA.Earth is vulnerable in a few ways including robotic replicators and solar flares and Dr Evils throwing asteroids.So I really like Googie architecture and hope it enjoys a rebirth; modernism was uncertainty, which fit the mood after WWI. Post-modernism is like a religion that doesn't pick a prophet. And realism is the paradoxical man trying to keep those taxes flat and get a ticket to heaven. If we are utilitarian we should get there if it is there. In the meantime, we need rotating space colonies. "We" aren't sure if AI is good or bad. Same for advanced bioengineering; certainly we want the longevity. Uncertainty if superbrains too.So I suggest marketing flying on Titan and living a long-time, for now, for a better future for our kids. And quantum encryption; it is useful for some observatories and this should be funded to help enforce dangerous technologies.

About Me

You can contact me at futureplanets1@gmail.com with any questions or comments.
I have followed planetary exploration since I opened my newspaper in 1976 and saw the first photo from the surface of Mars. The challenges of conceiving and designing planetary missions has always fascinated me. I don't have any formal tie to NASA or planetary exploration (although I use data from NASA's Earth science missions in my professional work as an ecologist).
Corrections and additions always welcome.